


Fatal Boy

by Lasertits



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Implied Bullying, Implied Patricide, Implied School Shooting, M/M, Outcast Ben, Poor Rich Kid Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 09:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11529018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasertits/pseuds/Lasertits
Summary: The boy with the beautiful red hair comes down from Uptown, where the houses fall back and hide behind ancient trees, where the gates are high and topped with razor wire and invisible alarms.





	Fatal Boy

 

The boy with the beautiful red hair comes down from Uptown, where the houses fall back and hide behind ancient trees, where the gates are high and topped with razor wire and invisible alarms.

He comes in a fashionably rumpled school uniform, with a gold heirloom watch on his thin wrist and a pack of cigarettes but no light. He leans in close to Ben, right there outside the supermarket, and his hair fans out like a wing, and you can smell he wears his father's understated cologne.

The boy with the beautiful red hair is called Armie, or Armitage in full, which makes Ben think of iron scrollwork and of the cold, still water in the pool at Armie's place, when Armie's parents are away (they always are), and he lets Ben dive in and swim there. It's saltwater, not chlorine, so Ben says they could keep sharks there, wouldn't that be cool? Small ones, at least.

"You are ridiculous", says Armie, lying on a deck chair in the shade, never in the sun. "Nothing can live here."

The boy with the red hair prefers it when Ben calls him _Hux, fuck, Hux_. He has freckles on his milky pale ass, a small tattoo high on the inside of his thigh (black widow spider, badly drawn) and a triangular white scar on his left shoulder. "Hot iron", Hux will say, "initiation, freshman year." That's just how private schools are. It's not the only scar Ben sees, but Hux won't talk about the others.

Hux, with the red hair, the fashionably rumpled uniform, the thin wrists and the smell of money, won't even look at Ben when he's surrounded by the other boys like that. Boys in sleek cars, boys that don't sweat, boys talking in that slow, sarcastic way and calling one another pet names.

"They aren't my friends", Hux says, "they're my connections. I have only one friend, Ben". And Ben, well Ben's the same.

The boy in washed-out black, with the broad, hunched shoulders and the pimpled face, lives in the Projects by a wasteland that was once, maybe, supposed to be a park, before the politicians lost interest. He wears his headphones in the corridors at school, and turns the volume up so he won't hear you calling.

He's nervous when he talks to you because he knows, he knows, that he'll inevitably say something weird, or he'll be too intense, and you will hate him. He hates you back.

The only one in Ben's entire life, that he could really talk to, is cold, beautiful Hux.

"I fucking hate my dad", Ben whispers in Hux's ear, from behind, moving slow. "Mom too, but him the most. I want to fucking kill him."

"You should", Hux says, a few weeks later, in Ben's tiny, dirty room on the Ikea bed. "Look what he did to me." And he undresses, shows Ben the bruises on his hips and something like a bite mark, low on his throat. It doesn't look quite right, but Hux is serious, insistent. It was Han who cornered him.

"I love you, Ben", Hux says, and he sounds slow, he sounds sarcastic, but his eyes are burning. "Let's be together for the rest of our lives."

Hux is sitting on his bed, holding his father's gun, two heavy duffel bags beside him. He's smoking there, indoors, and flicking ashes on the real silk cover, because Hux doesn't care about possessions, the way only a rich kid can.

Its graduation day for Hux's class, for Ben's class too, and Ben's dad is already dead.

"I love you too", says Ben. "Let's do this."

 


End file.
